Affected others explain as the person’s gambling difficulties worsen, they are left to pick up the pieces. They often feel responsible for making sure that the other person accesses support or treatment, monitoring them or stopping them from gambling, taking control of the family finances and paying off debts or dealing with policemen and creditors. These can be unfamiliar and stressful roles and responsibilities. Affected others describe not being able to relax and having to constantly remain vigilant in case the person gambles again. In many cases, affected others neglect their own needs to help the other person.
Especially, affected others often bail the person out financially, or are burdened with the financial consequences. They have conflicted feelings of guilt or worry as to whether they are doing the right thing. There is stress and frustration when the person does not accept they have gambling difficulties or are struggling to recover.
Children
Children describe feeling helpless. They didn’t see a way out of the situation they were in.
I would hide and pray to God and say I’ll do anything to get me out of this situation. And I think after a few times of trying that I realised that no one was listening… But I think that that’s why I sort of realised that there’s no one there and, there’s no religion and I’ve never sort of believed in it from that point, even though I was so desperate. I just didn’t see a way out.
One person described how children were tasked with the responsibility of stopping the person from gambling.
In the end, the children had to know. They had to be in charge of making sure he didn’t touch the laptop and making sure he didn’t have a phone. That’s a big thing to have to be responsible for.
Stepping in
Some affected others describe having to learn all there is about gambling addiction. They used self-help approaches to try to mitigate harm. They found help online and sought knowledge and information to try and understand more about the nature of gambling harm and addiction so they could help their loved one.
You have to read everything the internet has got to offer and just keep reading them. You need to learn about the addict and the addiction itself because until you can understand it, I can’t help him or me without learning as much as possible. Especially considering up until February, I hadn’t heard of gambling addiction apart from his one mention when we got together. Oh, it’s a whirlwind, and you can’t take your eye off the ball.
Some described having to repeatedly step in and constantly having to check on the person. Some put parental blocks on their partners phones. One described how she would stop playing a certain game on her phone in solidarity with her partner.
He was in a mess and didn’t know what to do. Like other instances, the initial shock, anger, confusion of his admission didn’t last long and once again I took control and tried to sort the situation.
There’s one game on our phones that we used to play. It didn’t cost you any money. It was never going to cost any money, but it was quite fun to play. We both had it, and he was on his phone all the time doing this because he’s got to feed this addiction, this addictive personality. I took it off his phone. I took it off mine as well. As I said, transparency, everything has got to be a two-way street. He said, “You don’t have to stop playing it.” I said, “I’m not going to ask you to do something I’m not willing to do myself.”
You have to keep doing it. I can’t relax and think, “Oh, I won’t bother checking his phones at all this month.” At the beginning it was obsessive. It was like every day. Then I think around once or twice a week, once or twice a month, and you have to remind yourself, “I haven’t checked his phone for a few days or a couple of weeks,” and you have to make yourself do it.
Bailing out
Parents, partners and siblings would often feel guilty for ‘bailing’ the other person out, as this went against what they were told in gambling support groups, online information, and what the people around them said.
Some people describe how the amount of money they’re lending the other person started small and grew. Eventually, they were taking out credit cards and paying off debts that were owed to other people.
I do really feel like it was a very iterative learning process of it starts out like he would ask me, “Can I borrow £20?” He’d be quite embarrassed about that. I’d feel like, “Yes, fine. No problem,” to eventually get into a place where they owe you thousands of pounds on credit cards.
Often, they were repeatedly asked to lend the person money. This left the affected other feeling conflicted. Sometimes they felt that they were enabling the person’s gambling, but they wanted to stop them and their family members from experiencing financial harm.
I know I was feeding a habit, but you look and you just think, “Well, I don’t want them to not have a home. I don’t want them to not have…” It’s really hard. It’s easy to think. I won’t, and every time I would say, “This is the last time,” but when it’s the reality of they’ll lose the home, they’ll lose this. You’re looking at those children, if it had just been my brother, you can lose that and we’ll get you help and you can move in with– but when it’s them, it’s really difficult to not do that. You knew you were enabling him, and he promised that he wasn’t gambling.
Others describe their experience of paying or managing gambling-related debts
Then I was a bit scared then, because I’ve been in situations in the past where I’ve been in debt, and there had been lots of problems, and so suddenly now, I’m getting into debt now because we didn’t have enough money to go cover things. It was like then having to go cap in hand for all these different organisations saying, I can’t pay this, I can’t pay that, how are we going to do this, how are we going to do that? I have to say, the Citizens Advice Bureau were amazing. They really helped me, because they took on all the phone calls.
Some affected others felt that they were manipulated to take on debt to help the other persons financial difficulties.
He managed to convince me to take out a credit card. He couldn’t get credit cards. He was blacklisted off all of that stuff by this point. He does work for a bank, and so I think he was quite able to present himself as, “I know about these things and I know that this will be really good for your credit score. Actually, this is good for you.” I bought into that. Also, not to generalise, but my experience was his gambling problem did make him extremely manipulative. He was very, very good at persuading me to do things that would ultimately facilitate that problem, but I didn’t see it that way.
Managing finances
Affected others described becoming responsible for managing them family finances and the added pressure that came with taking on this role.
He sort of said that he knew he needed to go back to GA because it was the only thing that worked. He didn’t want to have control of his money anymore. He needed somebody to do that for him because having the money in his pocket made him feel really anxious.
Some felt thrown into the deep end and unsure about what they were doing in managing the family finances and debt would have liked to see more support available for this.
There are times when I do feel frustrated about it, and it is something that I would like to see more support available for in the future, especially for the financial side of things because it is a big responsibility to take on. I have to make sure that everybody’s fed, and everybody’s got money where they need it to be, paying for school dinners and doing all the shopping within budget.
Although I acted on behalf of him in terms of dealing with the debt as it didn’t want to put that extra stress on him, he paid them himself with his own money and we repaid them back and forth. But I didn’t know if that was what I should do or even if that was possible or anything like that. So, I think the financial support is a big thing, too.
Although affected others put measures in place to stop the person from gambling, they describe frustration at other people in their social network doing things that helped keep the gambling going.
He had a friend who lend him £5,000 over the course of three months. They were in a position to do that but it was going like he would ask for £1,000 and come back two weeks later and ask for another £1,000. I know you can’t fully place the blame on that person, but I do feel a lot of anger of they knew he had a gambling problem and they still did that.
People describe other family members also helping to take control of the finances and monitoring that person’s spending.
At one point in time his sister was being the person who would do a weekly– he would take a video of his bank statement and send that to his sister, that was the arrangement. Just after a period, she would initially say, “Where is it?” Then after a period of time, she stopped asking and then he realised, “I can make spends and she’s not actually going to ask.” I totally get that other people have their lives to live and there’s only so much time they can actually give to him.
My step mum took control of the finances. His pay packet would go into her account. She would manage it to make sure that her and my younger half-sister were looked after and that they had a roof over their heads and stuff like that.